Looking at Striphas and Manovich together, we can begin to get a sense of how computation and culture interact, as well as the stakes for said interaction when framed by commerce. What I find most interesting in Striphas are common elements found in the development of each term explored in the text, specifically the implication of meaningful action. Whether it is the attribution of defining characteristics (seen with information) or a structuring procedure (algorithm), in each case there is the clear implication of conflicting forces on the side of order and disorder, and these terms are bound up in the struggle to negotiate between the two. With this tension in mind we can transition to Manovich, who offers a sense of how these concepts specifically apply to humanities research. Near the end of the article, Manovich aligns the concerns of the natural and social sciences with the general (in that they seek to discern large-scale relationships and patterns among observed phenomena), while those of the humanities are tied to the specific (focusing instead on the idiosyncrasies of particular cases). While it seems to be Manovich's goal here to bridge these approaches somewhat, there is an interesting gap that can not quite be closed. While Striphas emphasizes the attempts made by computing and information sciences to add form and legibility to chaotic realities, it is not made explicit by Manovich exactly where humanistic efforts fall on this spectrum.
This is, I believe, evidence of a tension that is picked up on by Gillespie in the examination of Facebook Trends. This is not exactly the central argument, but it stood out to me that in this case Facebook and its contemporaries are using algorithms to simultaneously obscure and illuminate human activities. This is not surprising, but it does seem to point to something about human thoughts and behaviors that makes for difficult interactions with computational processes. Without getting into a "turtles all the way down" line of thinking, such a situation highlights the impossibility of finding anything that approaches raw data. While it is inadvisable to go into too much detail on this argument in the abstract, the specific challenge posed by our species is noteworthy here. As our behaviors are never even close to unformed in some way, then it is quite difficult to conceptualize them in information science terms (even the most complicated of computing processes can be traced back to a binary choice). This is no surprise, but thinking back to Striphas for a moment, we can now begin to see an interesting trajectory in the development of the terms laid out in the article. As our understanding of our own behavior grows (presumably) more nuanced, it is unsurprising that the implication of a term such as "information" shifts from imparting order to a descriptor that adds adaptability or some form of procedural readiness.
Solon and Levin reveal (some of) the true stakes of such shifts in thinking. In the case of companies such as Google and Facebook, it is worth repeating that human behavior interacts with alrogithms in three distinct (but related) ways: it is regulated, obscured and ultimately influenced by them. From the perspective of the companies, the design of their systems seeks to impose a computation-compatible veneer on ungainly organic activities with the result that workers are subject to machine standards and modes of work while losing their own identities to the algorithm. As far as users are concerned, multiple authors have pointed to the fact that these systems have verifiable effects on opinions and ultimately actions. I do diverge from these authors slightly at this point. While one of their common concerns is that public life and discourse is increasingly privately-controlled, I would add to this the question of whether or not these private entities are acting entirely of their own volition. In other words: is the nightmarish hellscape that we call the public sphere beyond the control of even the private interests we perceive to be shaping it? The readings for this week seem to be pointing to a machine apocalypse of an entirely different sort, but one which is likely infinitely worse than a Terminator-type scenario.
A preliminary version of PreHistory Here. Navigation is not completely fleshed out at the moment; for the most part each major task can only be followed in one direction, some sections have yet to be designed and not all links are active. Enjoy, but keep expectations reasonably low.